The channels

Understanding our students’ communication needs and preferences includes asking about the channels they use to consume information, what kind of information they want to receive, who they want to receive it from and how often.  

We have been exploring these questions throughout the lifetime of the survey and have received consistent feedback that tells us our students are looking for most information from the University to come through email. The information they are most interested in hearing about through their inbox is tuition and fees (91%), academic information (84%) and urgent campus updates (82%). They are more likely to read an email if it has a subject line that is relevant to them or if the sender is someone they know or trust. They are more motivated to read an email if it is from their professor or academic advisor/program coordinator. 

Staying consistent with previous years, social media continues to be the second most preferred channel for receiving university information. The information students are most interested in seeing on their social channels are student life/community (51%), a newly added category, followed by campus events for all students (49%) and faculty/program events (45%).  

Websites continue to be a main source of information for students, as our respondents indicate that they would like to find most types of information online. The top categories of information respondents would like to see on websites are student service information and events (35%), equity, diversity, inclusion & anti-racism resources (34%) which was another new category this year, and awards and funding (32%). 

We asked our students who they consider to be an important source of information across communication channels, and they selected professor and Office of the President, which is consistent with 2021 results.